What to do with a boat-load of Asian plums
Asian plums are a bit different to work with than European plums. Besides eating them fresh, I found they make a very good cherry-flavored juice and lower sugar preserves.
I planted my Methley plum tree when I first moved to my property roughly 15 years ago. Since that time, it has reliably bloomed and set fruit for me every year once it reached maturity. It fruits relatively early in the season, and probably would do so even earlier than late July if I had this tree in a more sunny position.
That it reliably sets fruit is one of the perks of growing this tree - as few plums reliably set fruit the way that this one does. To see full reports of the plum tree varieties that growers have reported their success/failures on in our region, see this post.
The down side of Methley that the fruit can be a bit on the bland side if not fully ripe. The skin of Asian plums is a tad bitter and sour, as is the pit. You can easily peel away the outer skin with your teeth and work your way around the flesh. What you’re left with is a mild fruit that remind you a bit of watermelon.
Though they are good fresh, I’m not inclined to eat a whole lot of them. And this year - my tree decided to go absolutely haywire and set around 100 pounds of fruit.
Besides giving some away to friends and neighbors, I decided this is the year to try making something out of these plums. I researched a few options:
Option 1: Jelly without pectin. Sugar ratio is 1 cup juice: 3/4 cup sugar. That’s a fairly high ratio, and I’m a little worried that these plums are so watery that it would require boiling out the water so much to make for an even higher ratio.
Option 2: Jelly with regular pectin. Sugar ratio 5 cups juice to 7 cups of sugar. Yikes, still too high.
Option 3: Jelly with low-sugar pectin is the recipe that I ultimately selected. My only hangup with this method is that it says to pit the plums, which is not possible with Asian plums as they are very cling-stone.
In lieu of pitting the plums and running them through a jelly bag, I followed the directions on the other two recipes for extracting the juice. I plopped them into a Dutch oven, added the 1.5 cups of hot water, and then gently brought them to a boil.
They didn’t require much manipulation to get the juice to separate. I did use a potato masher that I had on hand to help them a bit, but probably isn’t necessary.
You can see in this photo that there is a lot of juice. In lieu of using a jelly bag, I just ran the whole mess through a fine mesh strainer. Each time I’ve done a full Dutch oven full of plums, I end up with more than the six cups needed for a recipe.
The resulting juice, as you can see, is a very dark red. Beautiful wine color. Unsweetened, it has a touch of sour/bitterness picked up by the skins. Using a bit of sugar solves that problem pretty quickly. It’s also thick enough that could be diluted a bit with water.
The flavor of the cooked product is very different than fresh. Just as European plums are completely transformed by drying or cooking, Asian plums taste wildly different as well. To me it tastes strongly of cherry. This is excellent news, as cherries a favorite fruit of mine but are notoriously disease-prone. And most growers have terrible problems with birds stealing all the fruit of cherry, but these plums barely get touched.
I’m super happy with the results. Most of these are likely to get eaten in PB&J, my signature comfort food.
Side note: I like to stock up on the high-fiber/high protein Dave’s Killer Bread from The Healthy Bread store in Milwaukie for sandwiches. It’s right across the road from Bob’s Red Mill. Combined with your favorite nut-butter, you’ve got yourself a heck of a meat-free high-protein meal for cheap.
What normally costs $6/loaf (or more) at the grocery store drops to around $2/loaf if you buy it by the dozen. I just stick them in the freezer and pull out individual slices as needed.
Next up in my garden will be a ton of pluots. Splash pluots in particular. Most likely they will get eaten fresh, as they are fantastic!
What’s happening in your garden?
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